


Wish you were here

by OddityBoddity



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Epistolary relationship, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, POV Steve Rogers, happyish ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-21
Updated: 2014-06-21
Packaged: 2018-02-05 15:08:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1822870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OddityBoddity/pseuds/OddityBoddity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve keeps getting postcards in the mail.</p><p> </p><p>  <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1985574">Because I am an inveterate sap, this now has a part II.</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	Wish you were here

**Author's Note:**

> Guys, guys! The incredibly kind and talented Voodooling podficced this story [over here!](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2775080)

“Uh,” Clint says. “Look, this is weird.”

He’s standing on Steve’s doorstep, frowning, which Steve is starting to think is his natural state.

“This came for you, but my address.”

He pushes a postcard into Steve’s hand and then turns, raising a hand in a farewell salute.

“Thanks,” Steve says. “Sure you don’t want to come in?”

“I don’t wake up till the sun’s over the yard arm, Rogers,” Clint says, not bothering to turn around, “it’s just that the dog barks at the mailman. And that was too weird not to deliver.”

Steve watches him go for a minute. He could protest, offer Clint a cup of coffee and then feed him up; he knows Clint’s broke and he knows what that’s like. But Clint’s proud and prickly and he’ll sniff out charity and resent it, so Steve takes the card and goes inside and then has a look at it.

It’s a picture of Flanders Fields, red with poppies, and the monument standing white against a robin’s egg sky. On the flip side, there’s a stamp, and nothing except Clint’s address, but Steve’s name above it.

 

 

 

A couple weeks later, Clint comes limping over while Steve puts a bag of frozen peas over Natasha’s rapidly blackening eye. Clint looks worse for wear too, and all of them are covered in dust and grease and sweat. It occurs to Steve he’s never seen Clint when Clint didn’t have at least one bandage on him somewhere. Clint looks at him, frowning, and then his eyes open wide, like he’s just remembered something.

“Oh yeah,” he says. “Meant to drop this off yesterday but then…” he gestures. Steve nods.

“Monsters. Explosions.”

Clint digs in his pocket and then hands over another postcard. It’s in about as rough a shape as Clint is, a little crushed and a bit damp with sweat, a smear of blood across the stamp.

“Holy crap is that a postcard?” Tony asks. He was slumped in one of the moulded plastic chairs that encircle the table, but he’s straightened up now to look at it. “I didn’t even know people still did physical mail. Sometimes you’re very seriously twentieth century, Cap.”

“It’s not like I’m sending them to myself,” Steve says.

“So, uh, you think you could tell your pen pal you don’t live at my place?” Clint asks.

Steve shrugs. “I’ll see what I can do,” he says, but he has no idea who’s sending the postcards, so it seems like Clint’s going to get at least another couple.

He looks at the image, a church, domed, capped with a golden cross, and a view of the harbour, then flips the postcard over. _Pretty place._ Someone’s written on the back in very tidy handwriting. _You’d like it._

Natasha sits up and frowns at the post card and then at him. “You have friends in Vladivostok?” she asks.

“I guess,” Steve says.

 

 

The third postcard comes to his mail box. It’s an extra-long one, the kind with a bunch of images in succession. There’s a temple with a big, swooping roof, and a golden Buddha, and a woman in a traditional costume of some kind. He turns it over.

 _Visit Beautiful South Korea!_ The text reads, and under that, in blue ballpoint pen that was giving up the ghost, someone has written:

_Sorry about the address. Got it right now._

It occurs to him that nobody writes cursive like that any more.

 

 

He’s started checking the mail every day. The next postcard comes three days after the last. It’s a photograph of a red dog-fox-racoon looking kind of thing playing with something that looks like a grapefruit.

_When did everything get so expensive?_

He puts it very carefully with the other ones, on the counter near the phone. It’s starting to be a stack.

 

 

Two days later, another one. This one’s a drawing of a rabbit dressed up like a samurai.

_Everything’s changed._

 

 

One day later, the same rabbit dressed up as a samurai, but instead of standing up, it’s sitting down, holding a little rabbit also dressed as a samurai.

_I can’t get drunk any more._

 

 

On Wednesday the mail carrier knocks on his door and she smiles when he opens it. “Hi, package for Stevie Rogers?”

He blinks. “That’s me,” he says.

She looks surprised. Maybe she was expecting a little kid. It’s a name for a little kid. Nobody would call a guy his size Stevie.

He signs for the package and takes it from her. The paper is silky and bound up in string, and the label is in that old fashioned handwriting, so carefully straight. He takes it to the counter, heart beating hard, and he wonders, briefly, if it’s a bomb or something. He should probably call Tony, he’d probably have some kind of scanner or swabber or something that would tell him if the package is safe or trapped. But he’s pretty sure where it came from so he cuts the string off and unwraps it without taking any precautions. It doesn’t explode.

Inside there’s a small book of fine, blank paper. A set of three slim pencils that smell like cedar. A piece of old paper that crumbles under his fingers when he unfolds it.

It’s a photograph, or what remains of one. He stares at himself. He was still himself then, more or less. Still stunned by the serum, still everything he ever wanted to be. Still had everything, back then, still had everything to lose. The photo’s a little blurry because he was turning his head when the picture was taken, turning to look at someone who’s been torn out of the picture, someone who isn’t there any more.

 

 

 

The next postcard is the Mauna Loa observatory and it reads _I’m afraid to go to sleep._

 

 

He avoids the mailbox the next day. And the day after. He works up the courage to check it on the third day and it’s empty and he feels stupid for having been leaving out the back door for the last half week, like he was hiding from someone. That night, he lies in bed and worries.

 

 

“You look like hell,” Sam says the next day, just before they go on stage. “You’re not sleeping.”

“No,” Steve admits. “But now’s probably not the best time for a heart-to-heart, is it?”

“I’m not going to ask,” Sam says. “This is just me reminding you that you don’t have to do everything yourself. All the stuff you’re about to say to these vets, to everybody who’s going to be watching? It applies to you too.”

Steve nods. “Thanks,” he says.

 

 

He lies awake that night too.

 

 

 

The next postcard comes a week after the Q&A. It’s Banff, green with trees, and a brilliant blue lake.

_You looked like shit on TV. Maybe you should listen to yourself talk._

 

 

 

Toronto at night. _THIS SHOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED TO US._ Blue pen, everything underlined with red lines, ruler-straight, everything written with such force that it warps the image on the flip side.

 

 

 

The lighthouse on Martha’s Vineyard. _I don’t know what to do._ And a return address.

 

 

Steve doesn’t bother with his coat, just grabs his wallet and goes running for the post office, where there’s a line up, of course, and there aren’t any good post cards, so he ends up picking one of the Flatiron and asking how fast they can get it to Edgartown, and pays a stupid amount of money to get it overnighted. He only wrote two words:

_Come home._

 

 

He waits for the mail carrier the next two days. Drinks his coffee on the porch in the slow autumn sun. On the third day she smiles when she sees him. “Your friend sure gets around,” she says and passes him the postcard.

It’s the Statue of Liberty. He turns it over in his hands.

_Wish you were here._

He runs, because even though there are faster ways, running feels like he’s doing something, so he runs and runs and runs.

It’s stupid. It costs something like a million dollars to expedite a postcard and Bucky won’t have anything unless he’s been able to scrounge it or steal it or find some kind of work that’ll let him get by but keep him off the radar. Steve knows he shouldn’t have let himself hope. The place is full of tourists with cameras and there’s the shop that sells bottled water and keychains and the same postcard he’s holding hard enough to warp in his shaking hands, but he's been stupid. The postcard is generic, and this place is full of people and cameras and there’s security everywhere. Of course he isn’t here.

Still, he must circle the island ten times, pointlessly looking. He goes into every building, walks around the whole museum, gets stuck posing for a photo with a group of Canadian women who’re unbearably excited and want to travel back on the ferry with him. He submits to the photos but extracts himself from the rest, stumbling over excuses, going red in the face, and not exactly running away, just walking really fast.

He goes into the cafeteria where it’s crowded and buzzing with voices, and gets into the lineup because he’s not ready to give up yet, but he doesn’t know where else to go or what else to do.

“That was pretty bad even for you, Stevie,” the man behind him says. “But it’s nice to see some things don’t change.”

His heart stops. Everything stops. Steve turns his head a little. It’s him. He’d know him at a hundred paces. He knows the way he stands, and the way his shoulders roll. He knows him by the way he looks up from under the brim of a ball cap, and meets Steve’s eyes. But the way he starts to say something and then hesitates, that’s unfamiliar. That’s different.

“Bucky-”

“Miss me?” he asks, stopping whatever Steve was going to say.

Steve breathes out. “Yeah,” he answers. He realizes the line has moved on and people are starting to look at him and frown. He gets moving, Bucky follows.

“You get the package I sent you?”

“Yeah.” Steve pours two coffees and pays for them both and looks over at Bucky. “You… you gonna come home or what?”

“No.”

“Ok,” Steve says. He tries not to notice the way the word made something twist in his chest. “When you’re ready.”

“Might never be ready.”

Steve nods. “Doesn’t matter,” he says. "You know where I live. You can always come home."

Bucky puts his head up and looks Steve square in the face. And then smiles that smile, the one that means _God dammit Steve._ It’s like he’s just hauled Steve out of an alley _again_ and Steve’s head is ringing like somebody’s been pounding on it, and his heart’s beating hard, but he doesn’t care that this is a fight he can’t win. Never did. And Bucky knows it.

“Thanks for the coffee,” he says and raises the cup like he’s going to make a toast. “Be seeing you.”

 

 

The next postcard comes more than a week later. Pusan, South Korea.

_There are beans in my ice cream. The 21 st century is insane. _

 

 

Steve puts it with the stack that’s growing by the phone, and smiles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
